And there was I, mistakenly thinking that's exactly what my article did..........

It does...... and it is also great to see the actual plunger.

Now for maybe a dumb question to you, Glen, but one I am nonetheless going to ask. :oops: How did they make the seemingly flawless ruffles that decorate the edges of these bowls? I see no tool marks, yet the plunger is as round as a pudding dish.

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Enjoying being in the Midlands.......some people are just amazing....xx

That's an excellent question - I hope I can give you an answer that will do it justice.

After the plunger had been removed from the hot glass, the bowl would have been "snapped up" - i.e. picked up by its collar base using a tool called a "snaps" (similar to a punty). While hot (very hot) it would have been first shaped (if desired) and then iridised - with a possible visit to the glory hole between times.

Holding the hot bowl by the collar base, using the snaps, the handler would have lowered it onto a specially shaped apparatus that would crimp the edges.

I wrote an article on fine crimp edges (a very tightly ruffled edge) in 1999 that the late Frank Fenton kindly helped me with. He explained it like this (I'll quote him):

"the item is taken up in the snap to be removed from the mould - then, when still hot and malleable, it is pushed down onto the open bottom section of a shaped apparatus known as "the crimp". The top part of "the crimp" (which is hinged in two sections) then closes down onto the piece to form the Fine Crimp edge."

The crimp would have been operated by a foot pedal when Carnival was first made, though Frank told us that later on they "got smarter". A relative, Jim Fenton, developed a way of utilising pneumatic power to operate the apparatus.

My Butterfly and Tulip? Well, it has some history. We bought it toward the end of a Carnival Convention in the USA many years ago, from a couple who had decided to sell all their worldly goods and go off into the sunset on a Harley.

We bought it for a reasonable price, but it was still a lot of money. It's a stunning piece. The Butterfly and Tulip bowl may be found in a more pulled up version, but mine (and the one in the eBay auction) is more flared, which shows the pattern very well. Another thing is that the pattern is often sideways on (strictly speaking it is the shaping that is sideways to the pattern) so it does not look quite as magnificent as those (scarcer) examples where the tulip and butterfly are right in the middle, and upright.

It's a big, heavy, imposing piece of glass that's hard to find.

I've no idea how many were made - it's just not possible to come up with those sort of records for Classic carnival. But I can tell you they are very hard to find - and it's even harder to get one with the pattern / flare just right.

Glen, that is a wonderful story, and I had no idea that there are good versions as well as bad.

I think glass is like music, when you here a certain song it brings memories flooding back, and its the same when you look at a favourite piece of glass. It brings back so much, sometimes from years ago. There are some bits I would never get rid of, even though my tastes have changed, as they have so much history tied up in them.